Russia Sought to Use Social Media to Influence E.U. Vote, Report Finds

LONDON — European authorities blamed Russian teams on Friday for disinformation campaigns designed to depress turnout and sway public opinion in final month’s European Union elections, an official accounting that underscored how Russian interference has not abated and that Facebook and different tech platforms stay weak to meddling.

The preliminary evaluation by the European Commission and the bloc’s international coverage and safety arm discovered that Russian-linked teams and different nonstate actors had labored to undermine credibility within the European Union by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Officials stated new rules may be wanted to drive web platforms to do extra to cease the unfold of intentionally false data.

The report was the primary official substantiation by the European Commission of the position that Russians and different teams performed in disinformation within the May elections, which many investigators, teachers and advocacy teams had warned about. It was a reminder of how lively Russians and others proceed to be in spreading divisive content material on-line to inflame and stoke electorates all around the world, a method that the Kremlin had pioneered within the 2016 American presidential election.

Since then, Facebook, Twitter and others have vowed to clamp down on international interference and have labored on new expertise and different strategies to cease outdoors meddling throughout elections. But the report on Friday highlighted how a lot work the platforms nonetheless wanted to do to keep a step forward of disinformation networks. The report additionally has implications for American officers forward of the 2020 presidential election, with an growing variety of smaller, harder-to-detect home teams adopting Russia-like methods to affect voters.

“The genie’s out of the bottle,” stated Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who has been monitoring disinformation efforts in Europe. “What we’ve seen over the past few years is an increasing number of actors, both state and nonstate, using similar methods online to interfere in democratic processes.”

European officers didn’t draw a direct hyperlink within the report between the disinformation campaigns and the Kremlin or present particulars about what teams in Russia or elsewhere had been behind the efforts. The report additionally stopped wanting assessing whether or not the techniques had an affect on how individuals voted, with turnout within the elections having hit report ranges. The report largely cited the findings of out of doors researchers who had been monitoring the European elections.

Yet European officers stated the report was vital as a result of it highlighted the “new normal” of disinformation campaigns.

Facebook said it had taken steps to protect the integrity of the European elections, including entering into partnerships with local fact-checking organizations, adopting new rules to show who was buying political ads on its platform and dedicating teams of employees to monitor election interference.

“The fight against false news will never be over,” the Silicon Valley company said in a statement in response to the report. “That is why we are making significant investments to remove fake accounts and clickbait and to promote high-quality journalism and news literacy.”

In the run-up to the voting, researchers highlighted efforts by Russia-linked groups and those in favor of far-right policies to use Facebook and Twitter to spread false information and exaggerate political divisions. In particular, they identified hundreds of Facebook and Twitter accounts peddling disinformation, more than a thousand examples of WhatsApp messages sharing suspicious materials and a mix of suspicious websites that spread varying degrees of misleading information — often taking advantage of local political divisions.

According to Friday’s report, Facebook blocked more than 1,700 pages, groups and accounts engaged in inauthentic behavior targeting European Union countries during the first three months of 2019. Voters in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain were among those targeted. Ms. Jourova said Russian meddling had been detected in 1,000 cases since January.

American intelligence officials have warned that the 2020 campaign will also be targeted by foreign groups. In January, the Worldwide Threat Assessment written by government intelligence agencies said Russia would continue to use social media to amplify social and racial tensions in an effort to influence policy and elections.

The European Commission report said new internet regulations might be needed, rather than a reliance on the companies to abide by a voluntary code of conduct. The commission said its full review, which it plans to complete by the end of the year, could result in new laws.

“More needs to be done by the platforms to effectively tackle disinformation,” the report said.

Last month’s vote was seen as a referendum on Europe’s direction. On one side were nationalist and populist groups skeptical of the European Union’s influence on national affairs; on the other were those seeking more integration and cooperation. The results were mixed, with far-right groups performing well in some countries and liberal parties doing better in others.

The election demonstrated a shift in disinformation strategy. The report said the efforts were smaller and more localized than Russia’s widespread effort during the 2016 American campaign. Far-right groups and other nonstate actors have also adopted the techniques, the report found.

Mr. Nimmo said governments would continue to find it difficult to stop groups committed to using online platforms to spread disinformation and sow discord. He said that in addition to focusing on big companies such as Facebook and Twitter, authorities should scrutinize smaller sites such as Gab and Parler.

“The commission says that this sort of behavior should not become the new normal,” he said. “That’s right, but hopelessly optimistic.”

One emerging challenge for governments and social media platforms is that groups are not sharing outright false information, making the content harder to detect and remove. Instead, social media posts tend to take highly politicized views on news events of the day, such as immigration.